Tuesday, 20 March 2012

REGULAR CONTENT OF MAGAZINE

Regular features in my magazine

-       Upcoming giglist
-       Album releases/ reviews
-       Song of the week
-       News
-       The charts
-       Readers letters
-       Interviews with popular artists
-       Funny Photos
-       Poster page
-       Big artist feature

RESULTS






Wednesday, 14 March 2012

PRODUCTION OF FRONT COVER






PRODUCTION OF FRONT COVER




EVALUATION OF COLLEGE MAGAZINE

Preliminary Priestley magazine evaluation

Logistics:
I planned the production of the magazine by firstly making up a name. Names that I toyed around with are (…). I chose ragasine because it seemed memorable and was the most original name there (some of them like ‘fresh meat’ were other peoples ideas). With the name sorted out I drew up a rough draft of the front cover. It had the outline of a person (in medium close-up shot) with the features and incentives surrounding it.
It was very vague but it reminded me of the task. I didn’t plan very much for the features or incentives of the magazine, and kind of made them up as I was creating it.

Technology:
I used Adobe Photoshop CS5 extended and most of the tools it features. To create the masthead I used the rectangle tool and the text tool. I had to change the font of the text to better replicate the magazine. To create the puff underneath it I used the custom shape tool. The background is a medium close up of one of my classmates as asked and it was taken by me. There is another feature on the page but it’s just in a plain black box to make the puff stand out more and keep variation. At the bottom there’s a small Ariel picture of the college to advertise the fact there’s a free map inside. Its been cropped so you only see inside the boundaries of the campus. I did this by cutting around the area with the polygonal lasso tool and then selecting ‘invert’ so that when I pressed delete the area that wasn’t highlighted got removed.
The last thing I did on it was add a lighting effect at just under the magazine title, so it looks like there’s a sun is shining on everything.


Reflection
If I was to do this task again, I would’ve spent more time getting a better photo to work with. If I did that, I probably could’ve made a better job of the features because I could plan ahead. I think most of the stuff I did worked but I should have done more because the bottom of the page look a bit empty. I’m most proud of the top of the page because it really resembled the covers I was using for inspiration. After doing this I’ve learnt a lot about the basic tools you use in Photoshop and I’m ready to learn more now.

IMAGES FOR COLLEGE MAGAZINE

Levels changed and saturation improved

Rough layout of DPS

Monday, 12 March 2012

Analysis of double page spread articles

Analysis of professional contents pages

Publication plan

magazine names:

Hip shady rhymes

Fresh controversy

Phresh beat

D.L FLOW

The ILLEST

Dope city














Positioning statement
My magazine is an independent rap magazine in the UK. It covers a lot of smaller artists rather than just a few major ones. It is aimed at young men as this is who rap music is most popular with. It covers a gap in the market which is non- mainstream rap music while having an interesting style and being accessible.

Price and frequency
My magazine will be priced at £3.99 and this is because it is only produced once a month but it isn’t targeted at a wealthy audience.

Article research

Article Research
My article will be an interview feature with an artist who’s got an album being released, so some of the questions should be about the album itself and the construction of it.


 This feature in kerrang magazine is what I’m taking inspiration from. It’s not about an album release, but it’s in interview format and it has the kind of page layout that I want; Simple, with a big picture of the artists which stands out. I will create a large article, so it takes up a bigger space (this feature is only one page whereas I have to fill two) I may edit the image I get in a way that looks gangster.

I can take some of the interview questions from the kerrang feature and make some up myself. I will probably use: How do you feel about the album release? What does the album feel like?  And the interviewer can make statements like ‘I heard you recorded most of the tracks in just a week’ to prompt the artist.